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elisp: Introduction

 
 1 Introduction
 **************
 
 Most of the GNU Emacs text editor is written in the programming language
 called Emacs Lisp.  You can write new code in Emacs Lisp and install it
 as an extension to the editor.  However, Emacs Lisp is more than a mere
 extension language; it is a full computer programming language in its
 own right.  You can use it as you would any other programming language.
 
    Because Emacs Lisp is designed for use in an editor, it has special
 features for scanning and parsing text as well as features for handling
 files, buffers, displays, subprocesses, and so on.  Emacs Lisp is
 closely integrated with the editing facilities; thus, editing commands
 are functions that can also conveniently be called from Lisp programs,
 and parameters for customization are ordinary Lisp variables.
 
    This manual attempts to be a full description of Emacs Lisp.  For a
 beginner’s introduction to Emacs Lisp, see ‘An Introduction to Emacs
 Lisp Programming’, by Bob Chassell, also published by the Free Software
 Foundation.  This manual presumes considerable familiarity with the use
 of Emacs for editing; see ‘The GNU Emacs Manual’ for this basic
 information.
 
    Generally speaking, the earlier chapters describe features of Emacs
 Lisp that have counterparts in many programming languages, and later
 chapters describe features that are peculiar to Emacs Lisp or relate
 specifically to editing.
 
    This is the ‘GNU Emacs Lisp Reference Manual’, corresponding to Emacs
 version 25.3.
 

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· Caveats             Flaws and a request for help.
· Lisp History        Emacs Lisp is descended from Maclisp.
· Conventions         How the manual is formatted.
· Version Info        Which Emacs version is running?
· Acknowledgments     The authors, editors, and sponsors of this manual.
 

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